Almost next door to the Blue Mosque in Iran's former capital of Tabriz, is the Azarbaijan Museum. The exhibits on the top two floors featured all the usual old pots, coins and one-armed statues, but down in the basement I found something far more interesting: the 'Misery of the World' sculptures by Ahad Hosseini.
These fearsome bronze masterpieces radiate a power and intensity that seems entirely alien within the confines of a small provincial museum.

Misery of the World, Tabriz, Iran

The twelve episodes that make up the collection are entitled 'Ignorance, 'War', 'Chains of Misery', 'The Miserable', 'Hunger', 'Political Prisoner', 'A Crystal Ball', 'Population Growth', 'Racial Discrimination', 'Five Monsters of Death', 'Anxiety' and 'Autumn of Life'.
Each of these striking metal constructions exude a depth of darkness and despair that can only be found in the kind of great art that dares to reach through to the underworld and illuminate.

Azarbaijan Museum Basement

Hosseini believes that 'all our misfortune is from our ignorance' and seems almost morally obliged to lead us on towards greater knowledge and understanding. At the same time, he seems to acknowledge that this same creative force has often only led to greater misery, hunger and anxiety: 'people are scared of the world they have made with their own hands'.

Having filled my mind with Hosseini's apocalyptic visions of a world of misery, I emerged from the neon-lit, but darkness-filled, basement and walked into the museum's cafeteria for a nice cup of tea.
I couldn't be bothered with the gift shop.

Desert Search

As we clattered through the Kyzylkum desert in the battered shared taxi, the driver reached across and offered me some pills.
When I asked him what they were, he shrugged.
Sometimes the drivers would take nicotine pills rather than smoking, but chewing tobacco had already been passed around.
When it was time to spit out the dregs, they would push open their doors and gob out huge streams of brown spittle into the passing desert.
If the timing were wrong and the wind in the wrong direction, then the back seat passengers would be splattered with the chewed out remains.
I was wary of accepting an unknown quantity of...

Last Chance

The two young Aussie guys in their bright white shirts couldn't hide their disappointment.
As the various day trippers had trudged back on to the Fraser Explorer four wheel drive bus, several had looked over to them quizzically.
They looked a bit too smart to be on our bus.
"We're custom officials" they said, cheerfully. They weren't really.
They were trying to flog fifteen minute flights over Fraser Island for seventy five Australian dollars a head.
Apparently this was great value, we'd see all the highlights from a bird's eye view - maybe even some dolphins and sting rays
- and we wouldn't miss any of the...

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Publications

I've recently been busy with Never Never Lands: Travels to Countries that Might Not Exist
but in the future I intend to write more travel articles and stories for magazines and web sites.
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About

My original plan in life was to become an international rock megastar.
Unfortunately, nobody understood my art.
After around ten years of playing guitar in failed heavy metal groups, I eventually went to university, as a mature student,
to take a degree in Third World Studies. After this also failed to get me anywhere,
I started to teach myself to program computers and eventually won a studentship to take an MSc in Information Technology.
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